Many office environments dedicate a number of offices and their associated personal computers and telephonic devices for visiting or telecommuting staff. Desk sharing (also known as office sharing or real estate/resource hoteling) facilitates the temporary allocation of a limited number of shared resources to a greater number of users. Desk sharing is particularly suitable for office environments where employees work multiple shifts, or where office personnel tend to move between multiple locations.
Desk sharing involves reserving a particular office space for a specific time period. A desk sharing application is a software program, typically incorporating a graphic user interface (GUI), that is used to view shared office spaces and their associated devices and to allow authorized users to reserve these office spaces and resources. Authorized users can select and reserve a shared office and its associated resources from the set of available resources, for a specified period of time. At the end of the desk sharing period, the resource is released and therefore becomes ready to be reserved and allocated by a different user.
Desk sharing applications may be used to reserve a physical location along with the computing and telephonic resources associated with that location. When sharing personal computers (PC) or workstations, the user gains full access to the company computing resources, email and Internet services as a result of logging in to the Local Area Network (LAN) or Wide Area Network (WAN) from any shared and connected workstation. Furthermore, PC users maintain their own customized setting as a result of the system automatically downloading their profile to the utilized workstation upon logging in to the network. The utilization of the user's standard profile while using the shared workstation allows that user to retain the preferred work environment, and consequently improve overall efficiency.
The telephonic network environment is different from the LAN or WAN network. In telephonic networks, an Enterprise Communication Platform (ECP) represents a single node in the communication network, typically comprising a PBX, a Common Access Platform (CAP), a desk sharing server and associated telephonic equipment. The interconnection of a plurality of these ECP nodes forms an “ECP network”. The various components of the ECP are connected using a number of standard or proprietary interfaces. For intra-node applications (i.e. within a single ECP), local desk sharing capability exists for the user to configure the new telephonic device with the desired settings either using the Private Branch Exchange (PBX) “autoset relocate” function (using one of the supported PBX interfaces) or by manually configuring the new device. An example of intra-ECP applicability achieved via the integration of autoset relocate with desk sharing is described in co-pending application entitled “Desk Sharing With Automatic Device Relocation” and commonly assigned to the assignee hereof, which application is incorporated herein by reference.
At the present time, ECP networks (comprising a plurality of ECPs) do not allow the standard device features of a telephone user to be transferred automatically to another telephonic device in connection with a desk sharing procedure. Nonetheless, a limited telephonic feature transfer is available for devices in an ECP network. Namely, when modem connectivity is utilized to access the PBX administrative terminal and execute the “modem relocate” function of the PBX between ECPs, the user is able to configure call forwarding and message waiting indication for the shared telephonic device. The modem relocate function allows the user to access the administrative terminal at the ECP (via a modem) and execute commands that result in mirroring the call waiting indicator and call forwarding of the home telephonic device at the shared telephonic device. Alternatively, the user may manually program the newly shared telephonic device with the desired features in a separate procedure and with no integration with the desk sharing application.
However, the prior art has several limitations. In particular, the modem relocate function is not completely integrated with the desk sharing application, thus requiring the user to separately perform office space reservation using the desk sharing application and device impersonation using modem connectivity. Further, it does not provide transfer of feature or telephonic device identity between telephonic devices belonging to two different ECP nodes (current capability is limited to call forwarding and message waiting indicator). Since the full feature set is not transferred, some of the features and attributes of the new telephonic device will not correctly reflect the actual user (such as the name display and billing information). While manual configuration of shared telephonic devices is an option, as more features are added to telephonic devices the manual configuration task becomes more difficult and time consuming, e.g. to accommodate users who frequently use the shared device for only short periods of time. Furthermore, deletion of or otherwise resetting a prior user's configured features from the shared device might be necessary in the prior art.